With Friends: The Reunion set to premiere May 27 on HBO Max, a group of genealogy experts at the ancestry site MyHeritage have discovered that Friends stars Matthew Perry and Courteney Cox are distant cousins.
According to CNN, the connection is through Cox’s mother, Courteney Copeland, and Perry’s father, John Bennett Perry. The two actors share distant relatives named William Osbern Haskell III and Ellen Haskell, who were married 500 years ago.
“We went into this line very deeply, we checked every name. We found a lot of records that support it, and we have confidence that they are related,” Roi Mandel, the head of research at MyHeritage, told CNN. “This is not such a surprise. It makes sense that when you go so many generations back, the chances of people being connected are higher.”
During Friends’ 10-season run, Perry and Cox famously portrayed one of the most beloved couples in TV history. Their characters, Chandler Bing and Monica Geller, married in season seven and became parents in the show’s 2004 series finale.
The discovery arrives just a day before the cast of Friends is set to reunite for Friends: The Reunion, which debuts Thursday (May 27) on HBO Max.
“Guess you could call this the one where they all got back together — we are reuniting with David, Jennifer, Courteney, Matt, Lisa, and Matthew for an HBO Max special that will be programmed alongside the entire Friends library,” Kevin Reilly, chief content officer HBO Max, said in a press release last summer.
Cox recently stopped by the Ellen Degeneres Show to discuss her experience filming the highly anticipated reunion. “It was unbelievable, so emotional,” she said. “It was great — we had a lot of special surprises.”
